Data compression allows storing more data in a smaller space, and later reconstructing the original data. The use of data compression may allow improved use of limited bandwidth over channels such as cellular networks.
It is important that many different clients be able to decompress video which has been compressed using various techniques. Accordingly, the decompression process typically is kept simple to avoid the requirement of special hardware to decompress. However, the compression process can be extremely complicated, since specialized hardware can be used for the compression.